Elizabeth Tashjian; Great NY Sun obit (the nut lady)
Hyfler/Rosner
Elizabeth Tashjian, 94, Founded Nut Museum
BY STEPHEN MILLER - Staff Reporter of the Sun
February 1, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/47857
Elizabeth Tashjian, who died Sunday at 94, was proprietor of
the Nut Museum, a quirky collection of nuts, nutcrackers,
and nut art that she dared visitors to take seriously.
Situated in a couple of rooms of Tashjian's Old Lyme, Conn.,
mansion, the museum garnered the attention of compilers of
books on wacky museums (focusing Lawrence Welk, Tupperware,
nuts) as well as late-night schmoozers from Carson to
Letterman. The Nut Museum even caught the prurient eye of
Howard Stern, who thought he was being shocking when making
anatomical comparisons.
But like so many who tried to simplify its message, Mr.
Stern missed the place's serious whimsy. In the mold of
Salvador Dalķ, Tashjian used nuts as the centerpiece of a
surreal world in which she was the star performer.
Opened in 1972, the Nut Museum was a showcase for her nut
paintings, a nut crčche in a coconut shell, and the prize of
her collection, a kind of double coconut weighing 35 pounds
from the Maldives, known as a "coco de mer." Tashjian liked
to point out that it resembled a female pelvis, and used it
to illustrate her theory that humans were descended from
nuts. Darwin, she told Mr. Letterman, was "bunk."
An 8-foot nutcracker hung out front of the place. Admission
originally cost one nut, and when this proved financially
impractical, $2 and a nut. The arch-mannered Tashjian, whose
naiveté seemed mainly of the faux variety, claimed never to
have heard of "nut" as a term of disparagement until a
visitor offered his wife in lieu of a nut for admission.
Thereafter, she resolved to remove any stigma from
nuttiness. "I'm releasing 20 million people who are called
'nuts,'" she told the Boston Globe in 2003. "It isn't a
joke, too."
It was a sad irony, then, that she ended up being declared
incompetent and having her Nut Museum shuttered and sold off
in lieu of back taxes. "How cruel, how merciless to have the
state kidnap the Nut Lady," she wailed to the Hartford
Courant in 2003.
Tashjian grew up in New York, the cosseted daughter of
Armenian immigrants. Her father, a carpet dealer, supported
the family in a lush Riverside Drive apartment complete with
a chauffeur, but her parents were divorced when Tashjian was
young.
She claimed that she and her mother were poor after that,
though took violin lessons, attended private schools, and
went on to study art. She exhibited at galleries in the
1930s and won a prize from the Art Students League. One of
Tashjian's early paintings, "Cracker Chase," was of an
eagle-headed nutcracker preying on hazelnuts.
Following her mother, she became a devout Christian
Scientist, serving for a time as a healer. A sense of faith
and an awareness of the numinous suffused much of her art,
and nuts, in her hands, became tokens of a higher reality.
In 1950, Tashjian and her mother left the city and moved to
the 13-room home in Old Lyme. Her mother died in 1959.
Tashjian never married, and seems to have become
progressively more interested in nuts. By 1972, a small item
in the Courant about the opening of the Nut Museum described
her as having "spent much of her life amassing a collection
of art works based on the theme nuts."
Tashjian told the Courant she wanted to build a
walnut-shaped outbuilding for the collection. The
outbuilding was never to be, but more than 30 years later,
her ambition still burned. "I am trying to do for nuts what
Cezanne did for apples," she told a new generation of
Courant interviewers in 2005.
Alas, her last years were spent in bitter decline. After
decades of maintaining the Nut Museum on a shoestring, she
began to falter and her home fell into disrepair. The
bicycle that was her only transport to the grocery story
broke down and was not repaired. Squirrels came down the
chimney and began nibbling at the collections.
In 2002, after she refused entry to a social worker, she was
declared incompetent and later fell into a coma. She
miraculously recovered, but her home was sold for back
taxes.
A 2005 documentary, "In a Nutshell," brought attention to
her plight, and a Connecticut College professor of art
history, Christopher Steiner, saved her collections. In
2004, he mounted an exhibition of her collection at the
Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Conn. To emphasize
that she, as much as the nuts, was a part of the show, Mr.
Steiner included a mannequin of Tashjian. He is writing a
book about her, to be called "Performing the Nut Museum."
Matt_InTheWoods
that had a jingle "I'm a nut, you're a nut...(etc). Soft drink? Candy bar?
Matt_InTheWoods
a...@hot.net wrote on 2/1/07 8:41 AM:
> x-no-archive: yes
>
> "Matt_InTheWoods" <hemigu...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:C1E752D9.2BD6%hemigu...@aol.com...
> I can't remember, either!
> But I love and remember this one:
>
> 'Mounds / Almond Joy'
>
> "Sometimes you feel like a nut [Almond Joy], sometimes you don't
> [Mounds]."
> --1980s commercial for both candy bars
>
> <technically, almonds aren't a 'nut', they are a member of the peach
> family, therefore a fruit!>
Maybe I was thinking of "I'm a pepper, you're a pepper...(etc.) I don't
remember any more of the jingle or the product.
Brad Ferguson
<rel...@rcn.com> wrote:
> Opened in 1972, the Nut Museum was a showcase for her nut
> paintings, a nut crčche in a coconut shell, and the prize of
> her collection, a kind of double coconut weighing 35 pounds
> from the Maldives, known as a "coco de mer." Tashjian liked
> to point out that it resembled a female pelvis, and used it
> to illustrate her theory that humans were descended from
> nuts. Darwin, she told Mr. Letterman, was "bunk."
Don't get too excited this time, Roy, or we'll have to call the cops
again:
Brad Ferguson
> Alas, her last years were spent in bitter decline. After
> decades of maintaining the Nut Museum on a shoestring, she
> began to falter and her home fell into disrepair. The
> bicycle that was her only transport to the grocery story
> broke down and was not repaired. Squirrels came down the
> chimney and began nibbling at the collections.
My apologies to the Nut Lady, but that last line made me laugh out loud.
John M.
>x-no-archive: yes
>
>"Matt_InTheWoods" <hemigu...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:C1E75D0F.2BE8%hemigu...@aol.com...
> That's it!
>
> 'Dr. Pepper' commercial.
>
Peppers are a fruit. Almonds are a seed, therefore a nut. Peach pits are a
nut, in a way, if you can crack them to get to the kernel.
--
John M.